United States head coach Jurgen Klinsmann said: 'We could have turned that game around. But why not do it earlier?'. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP

The USA’s best player in Brazil was also their oldest: the 35-year-old Tim Howard excelled not only against Belgium but throughout the World Cup’s group stage.

But over the next 12 months, Jurgen Klinsmann intends to give youth a chance. Speaking to the press a day after his team’s elimination in the last 16, the coach said now was the time for the national team to bring new faces into the fold.

“A good thing about this next year is that we kind of have the opportunity to see a lot of young players coming to our platform, coming to the senior team,” said Klinsmann. “We can give them time to show where they are up to right now.

“The experienced players, or the older players, we can tell them for the next couple of months: ‘Go play in your club environment, we know you inside out anyway, we know what you bring to the table. But right now maybe there’s time for the next couple of friendlies that come up and over the next year that we want to see the young players grow and see how they can make it.’”

Klinsmann said he felt good about where things were headed with USA but suggested it was time to start pushing certain players harder than he had in the past.

“I think overall that we are going in the right direction,” he said. “With the competitions we have now happening every year, it just will help us to become more consistent, and more demanding on the players. Not just letting them get away with things.

“We need to get critical in certain moments, making them aware that, ‘Listen, if you had put that ball in the net yesterday, we would be in the next round.’ Without making it too harsh. They need that sense of accountability, that sense of criticism, and of the people around them that care about it.”

USA have plenty to keep them busy over the next couple of years. Next summer brings the Gold Cup, before the United States host the Copa América in 2016 – becoming the first country from outside South America ever to do so.

If Klinsmann’s team win the Gold Cup next year, they will also be guaranteed a place at the Confederations Cup in the summer of 2017. The manager characterised that as an important goal.

“For Gold Cup we want to go with the strongest team possible,” he continued. “It’s going to be similar to a World Cup, we want to play our best team, and then we can see how many of the experienced players are in it and how many are out. But this transition year coming up is definitely the opportunity to bring a lot of young players now through the ranks and see what they’re capable to do.”

Asked if US players were simply not talented enough to win a World Cup, Klinsmann deflected his answer on to the subject of preparation. “Well, we said before that we get benchmarked at the World Cup, and our benchmark ended last night,” he replied. “So there’s definitely stuff we have to improve and get better in.”

“It's many things off the field and it is many things on the field. Playing at that kind of a tempo, that kind of a rhythm every three or four days, this has to become the norm, which it’s not yet. The example is Fabian Johnson, who never played every four days with Hoffenheim because they don’t play Europa League or Champions League. So he only played one game every week. Now suddenly you hit this type of a level, the highest tempo and suddenly your body gives you signals. ‘Hey, I’m not sure about this’.

But Klinsmann did concede regret about his team’s failure to play as proactively as he would have liked. He argued that his team had proven at this World Cup that it was capable of playing on the front foot against good teams, but too often allowed themselves to fall a goal behind before finding the courage to do so.

“I think it’s a mentality topic,” he said. “We have to break through [that mentality] in a certain way, because the interesting part is that every time we go down a goal, we shift it up. Then we suddenly build the pressure higher up the field and we give our opponents the real game.

“There’s still this sense of too much respect. That’s why I tried to have so many friendly games against European teams to [get across the message that] ‘Yes, you respect your opponent, but you leave that respect off the field and go and give them the real games.

“We could have turned that [Belgium] game around in the last 15 minutes of extra time. Absolutely, we had enough chances even to win it 3-2 in extra time. But why not do it earlier? So this is a constant discussion we have.”